A rigid, hinged-lid packet of cigarettes comprises a group of cigarettes wrapped in a sheet of foil; and a rigid outer package housing the group of cigarettes. The outer package comprises a cup-shaped container housing the group of cigarettes and having an open top end; and a cup-shaped lid hinged to the container along a hinge to rotate, with respect to the container, between an open position and a closed position respectively opening and closing the open end. A collar is normally folded and fitted inside the container to project partly outwards of the open end and engage a corresponding inner surface of the lid when the lid is in the closed position.
The outer package is parallelepiped-shaped, and is bounded by a horizontal top wall, a horizontal bottom wall opposite and parallel to the top wall, a vertical front wall, a vertical rear wall opposite and parallel to the front wall, and two opposite, parallel, vertical lateral walls; the lid hinge is horizontal and located on the rear wall; and the collar is U-shaped and contacts the inner surface of the front wall and lateral walls.
In almost all currently marketed rigid cigarette packets, the front and rear walls are larger than the lateral walls. Rigid, so-called “short-hinge” cigarette packets have also been proposed, however, in which the front and rear walls are smaller than the lateral walls, and in which the collar is preferably tubular and therefore contacts the inner surface of both the front and lateral walls and the rear wall.
A cigarette packing machine normally comprises a packing assembly, which receives a succession of foil-wrapped groups of cigarettes, and folds a blank about each group of cigarettes to form a rigid outer package. More specifically, a cardboard blank is fed, together with a foil-wrapped group of cigarettes, into a pocket on a packing wheel, which rotates through a number of folding stations where the blank is gradually folded about the group of cigarettes to form the rigid outer package.
Packing machines for producing packets of the above type are known and employed throughout the tobacco industry. Known currently marketed packing machines, however, are designed to produce standard rigid cigarette packets, in which the front and rear walls are larger than the lateral walls, but not rigid, short-hinge cigarette packets, in which the front and rear walls are smaller than the lateral walls, and which feature a tubular collar.
At present, rigid, short-hinge cigarette packets are produced on special packing machines which differ considerably from the standard packing machines described above. In particular, the special packing machines employ flattened tubular blanks, which are “opened” along a packing line to receive respective axially-fed groups of cigarettes. Though producing good-quality packets of cigarettes, special machines of the above type are expensive to produce, have a low output rate, and, above all, employ flattened tubular blanks which are much more expensive and difficult to process than ordinary flat blanks.